The third volume of J.R.R. Tolkein’s
Lord of the Rings trilogy is entitled The
Return of the King. The heir to the
long-lost line of kings from the city of
Gondor has been living rough as a
ranger in the north country, guarding
the borders of Middle Earth. The city is
being ruled by a line of stewards, servants
of the king now charged with the
day-to-day decisions of the kingdom.

It’s not difficult to see in this a
metaphor for our own life in the kingdom
of God, that kingdom that theologians
describe as “already but not yet.”
It is a reign inaugurated by Christ in
the incarnation but interrupted for a
time by his death, resurrection, and
ascension. We do our best to make the
decisions we think God wants us to
make, but we’re not always sure we’re
headed in the right direction. Tragically,
we sometimes find ourselves
obstinately headed in the wrong direction.

In Tolkein’s Middle Earth, the last of
the stewards, Lord Denethor, is broken
by grief at the death of his favored
elder son and twisted by the manipulations
of the dark lord. He refuses to
acknowledge Aragorn, heir to Elendil,
seeing only the humble and despised
ranger from the north. Denethor’s own
ambition has blinded him to his true
role. The wizard Gandalf finally tells
him, “It is not in your power to deny
the return of the king.”

In our Gospel today, Pilate questions
Jesus about the claim that he is “king
of the Jews.” There’s no way to be sure
in John’s Gospel whether Pilate is
being sincere, cynical, or something in
between. He tries to fit Jesus into his
narrow frame of reference, seeing him
as a would-be king, perhaps a pretender
to the throne of Herod. But
Jesus reminds him that the kingdom of
heaven will always and everywhere be
something eternal rather than temporal.
It’s not governed by the same rules
or susceptible to the same weaknesses
that so many worldly kingdoms are.

Today’s feast can be difficult for us to
grasp. We live in a democracy, a nation
in which people select their leaders
based on a mixed bag of impressions,
beliefs, facts, and opinions. Our experience
of leadership has been tarnished—
even broken. It can be hard
for us to imagine Eternal Truth in the
guise of a temporal leader.

There’s no little irony to be found in
the fact that when Jesus walked this
earth, he let go of any such trappings
of power. That might be our first clue
that the image of Christ the King exists
on an entirely metaphorical plane, a
concession to our need for human
images.

Lovers of great literature know the
truth of the saying, “All stories are
true. Some of them actually happened.”
Perhaps we need to take
today’s feast out of the world of history
and politics and into the world of myth
and fairy tale, a world where kings and
queens, knights and wizards, are symbols
of great good or great evil. It
allows us to see the great truth of life
through a different lens, unburdened
by what we think we know too well. It
helps us, in fact, return to a childhood
world of intuitive understanding.

As we listen once again to the great
stories of our faith, we are left with
this truth. Christ must be always and
everywhere the most important thing
in our lives, the only thing we worship,
the only one to whom we give
unswerving allegiance.